What These Wings Can Do
by Loose Cannon Doccy
Summary: After dropping a thousand tonnes of concrete on Spiderman; Adrian Toomes waits on a billboard at night, looking at Stark Tower. (drabble, focused on Vulture from Homecoming)


Every time after I take off, I take one long look at that tower. Tony Stark's tower. I wonder how much money that thing cost to build. I wonder how it's built, how it's furnished. If it's got those beautiful tables I saw in a science-fiction movie once when I was young, like panes of glass more than a table.

It's a spectacular sight, especially at night - and I do a lot of night flights. It's got all those little red dots all over it to warn anything flying, like me. Okay, maybe not like me. I don't think they ever expected a salvager like me to be flying around in the sky like the Iron Man.

"Salvager", heh. I was only that for what, a few minutes? I came flying up on big wings, headed for the dream of a good life for my wife and daughter, and what happened? What always happens when some no-good blue collar tries to eat more than table scraps.

Big Government happens, financed by the rich and powerful. Big Government holds us down while the elite empty our pockets and build towers with their money - no, with our money, all for the crime of dreaming. All for wanting to fly.

That Tony Stark, there's nobody I hate more. How'd he pay for that tower? His fancy toys? Did he scrape them together himself, no! He bought them with weapons and with popularity. He sells weapons of great destruction for years, brings chaos to the world and all of a sudden he has a change of heart?

He throws all that away, like he thinks he's grown a _conscience_ of all things and what happens? Does he lose everything he had? _**NO!**_ He just builds himself up bigger than ever before not as Tony Stark the arms dealer and playboy, but as Iron Man, the genius inventor and superhero! He creates his Avengers and fights aliens, saving the world as is his want.

But of course, he hadn't changed one bit. The only thing that changed was who he stepped on to get what he wanted. That fateful day it became me he stepped on, like so many others. And for what, so he could worm his way into the government's good grace so they'd tolerate him and his Avengers?

If there's any justice in the world, he'll get his. I know it's not something I could do. Hell, maybe I could. I could wait here for him, and strike when I saw him. The last thing he'd see would be my metal wings in the moonlight.

Yeah, and then what? His Avengers will lift their cushy butts from Stark Tower and come down like the fist of God on me, on my family and on my friends. I got people counting on me too. My employees, my daughter… one act like that would mean the end for them as well as for me. I can't do that to them. I'm not like that, I'm not like Tony Stark.

No way they'd do anything otherwise. Stark's shown up nearly every time I got Pedro on the ropes, but never went after me. He could stop me like that, with all that technology he's got. He could blast me out of the sky in the blink of an eye, but he hasn't. And I know why. It's because I'm beneath his notice.

Me and those like me, we're too far down from his high horse for him to even see. You know, I feel bad about what I did to the kid - but I did warn him. I warned him what would happen if he got in my way again. And so he's gonna have to suffer the consequences for it, in a concrete crater grave.

Come on, come on now. The tension of waiting is killing me. This job, this one last job, this will be the big one. I can't ever dive-bomb Stark and kill him like he deserves, but this I can do. I can fly up farther than I've ever gone and give his pride, him and the Avengers', the biggest bloody nose they've ever suffered.

After this, he'll see. He'll see that an old man like me can fly too, as high as he can. That I took his table scraps, the bits of meat and pie too rotten to eat and made my own wings from them - and then I took his meal, that I made him go hungry for a day. That for once, he's the one getting stepped on.

Maybe finally he'll bother to look down from his beautiful tower. Maybe he'll finally see that he wasn't as good as he thought he was. Who knows, maybe the bastard would reinvent himself a second time to get past that! Maybe he would find another group of people to step on so he wouldn't be stepping on us.

But he'll never understand, not until he experiences what it's like to be put out of business. Not until he has to choose between his morals or his family. He's been lucky, not just in his business, but with his morals. He's not a good person, he's just never had to face a situation where he had to be anything but a good person.

Maybe then, when he's finally got to make that kind of choice he'll understand what it's like to eat other people's table scraps. When he loses those wings of his and has to hide in the dark, desperately trying to make his own wings, maybe he'll feel a fraction of the rage I have. Maybe then he'll understand what it's like to be angry in your bones, a vibrating hate that never goes away.

Maybe then he'll understand what it feels like to be sitting there, surrounded by the broken pieces of your life that can't ever fit back together. That can't be… reinvented. That you can't just come back from, better than ever.

Until then, nothing for it. All I know is that the only danger I had to my plan is dead and I have a high-altitude vacuum seal perfect for robbing a stealth automatic plane that's carrying technology worth enough to make sure Liz will never be needing anything in her life ever again.

A plane like that's gotta be heading up high. Way higher than an old man with wings made of scavenged old alien metal.

Let's see what these rotten wings can do, then.


End file.
